"Pip" Part 12

"Will you come and help?"

"No. He looks rather a decent chap. He's only been here a week; he may not know about white boots."

"Ought to, then," snapped the bloodthirsty Mumford. "Other people find things out all right."

"Not all," grunted Pip. "How about stamps?"

Master Mumford turned his back with some deliberation, and addressed himself severely to the labours of composition. Once, during his first week at Grandwich, he had called at the Head Master's, and having, after a wordy encounter with an unexpected butler in the hall, succeeded in pus.h.i.+ng his way into the study, had endeavoured, in faithful pursuance of the custom in vogue at his private school, to purchase a penny stamp for his Sunday letter from the stupefied autocrat within.

Linklater's white boots were duly filled with soap and water, but Pip was not present at the ceremony. He sought out the victim next evening and invited him to supper--sardines, and condensed milk spread on biscuits--in his study after prayers. An invitation from Pip was something sought after among the Juniors in "Uncle Bill's" house, for Pip, though only fifteen, was regarded as a certainty for his Eleven colours this year, after his electrifying performance on last year's house-match.

Linklater gratefully accepted the invitation, and the two became friends from that day. They possessed opposite qualities. Pip admired Linklater's vivacity and _bonhomie_, while Linklater was attracted by Pip's solid muscle and undemonstrative ability to "do things." But cricket was their common bond. Linklater was almost as promising a bat as Pip was a bowler, and the two rose to eminence side by side. But despite their early proficiency, it was fated that neither should be Captain of the Eleven,--Pip for reasons already stated, and Linklater for another, which came about in this way.

Nearly every schoolboy has a _bete noire_ among the masters, and every master has at least one _bete noire_ among the boys. Fortunately it very seldom happens that the antipathy is mutual. If it is, look out for trouble, especially when the boy has a dour temper and the master is fault-finding and finicky. Such an one was Mr. Bradshaw, late Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, and a born fool.

Hostilities began early. On Linklater's first appearance in the Lower Sixth, Mr. Bradshaw remarked unfavourably on the shape of his collar, and elicited loud and sycophantic laughter--which is always music in the ears of men of his type--by several facetious comments on the colour of his tie. Linklater chafed and glowered, and muttered "Swine!" under his breath,--symptoms of discomfiture which only roused Mr. Bradshaw to further humorous efforts. Thereafter the two waged perpetual warfare.

Linklater took his opponent's measure with great accuracy, and then advanced to battle. He discovered that Mr. Bradshaw was deaf in his left ear. He therefore made a point, whenever possible, of sitting on that side and making obscene noises. Mr. Bradshaw was extremely bald, and ashamed of the fact. Linklater had noted in his study of the Scriptures that the prophet Elisha had suffered from the same infirmity: consequently Mr. Bradshaw found his blackboard adorned every morning for a month with the single word ELISHA in staring capitals. When Mr.

Bradshaw was irritable Linklater was serenely cheerful; when Mr.

Bradshaw was blandly sarcastic Linklater was densely stupid; and after ostentatious efforts to understand his preceptor's innuendoes, would shake his head pityingly, with a patient sigh at such ill-timed levity.

So the battle went on. Every schoolboy knows what it must have been like. Matters were bound to come to a crisis. One morning, during a Cicero lesson, the form came upon a Greek expression amid the Latin text, and Mr. Bradshaw, who rather fancied himself at this sort of thing, added a touch of distinction to his translation by rendering the word in French. The form received this flight of scholars.h.i.+p without enthusiasm, merely wondering in their hearts how any man could be such an unmitigated a.s.s as to be desirous of elucidating for them a language of which they knew but little by translating it into another of which they knew still less.

"Yes, _elan_ is exactly the right translation," quoth Mr. Bradshaw, well pleased. "There is always a way out of every difficulty if we only look for it. Get on!"

"Please, sir, what does _elan_ mean, exactly?" inquired Linklater, not because he wished to know, but in the hope that "Braddy" would waste several precious minutes in explaining.

The master rose to the bait.

"Mean? Bless my soul, what a question! Not know? Here, tell him, somebody--Martin, Levesley, Smith, Forbes, next, next, next!"

Various futile translations were offered, and Mr. Bradshaw stormed again.

"Do you fellows do _anything_ in the French hour except eat bananas?" he inquired. (Deferential sn.i.g.g.e.rs.) "What are French lessons but an excuse for idleness? Really, I must ask the Head--"

They let him run on, while the golden moments slipped by. As soon as he showed signs of flagging, Linklater, seeing that it still wanted eight minutes to the hour, repeated--

"But what _does_ it mean, sir?"

"Mean, you insufferable dolt! It means--it means--er, 'energy,'

'verve,' 'dash'--yes, that's it! 'dash'!"

Linklater held up a respectful hand.

"I said 'das.h.!.+' sir, the moment the question pa.s.sed me," he remarked meekly.

The form roared, and unanimously decided afterwards that "Link was one up on Braddy." Mr. Bradshaw, after the manner of his kind, reported Linklater to the Head for "gross impertinence." The Head, who had not reached his present high position for nothing, took a lenient view of the case, merely requesting Linklater to refrain in future from humour during school hours. But for all that Linklater determined to be "even with Braddy" for reporting him: and so successful was he in his enterprise that he effectually destroyed his own last chance of leading a Grandwich Eleven to Lord's.

The schoolboy is an observant animal. Mr. Bradshaw, like most men who carry method and precision to extremes, was a ma.s.s of little affectations and mannerisms, one of the most curious of which was his habit of pa.s.sing his right hand in one comprehensive sweep along his bald head and down over his face. The boys knew this trick by heart: Braddy was much addicted to it at moments of mental exaltation,--say, when standing over a victim and thinking out the details of some exceptionally galling punishment. Milford tertius, the licensed jester of the Lower Fourth, had indeed been caned by the Head for a lifelike imitation of the same, rendered to a delighted pewful of wors.h.i.+ppers during a particularly dull sermon in chapel.

The schoolboy, as we have said, is an observant animal. Very well, then.

One morning Mr. Bradshaw, as he entered his cla.s.sroom, majestic in cap and gown, closing the door carefully and lovingly behind him, with all the cheerful deliberation of a Chief Tormentor who proposes to spend a merry morning in the torture-chamber, suddenly beheld Linklater stand up in his place and heave a "Liddell & Scott" (medium size) across the room at an unsuspecting youth in spectacles, who was busily engaged in putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to a copy of Greek Iambics.

The book, having reached its destination, rebounded in obedience to one of the primary laws of mechanics, and fell with a heavy thud upon the floor. The form, after the first startled flutter, settled down with a happy sigh to witness the rare spectacle of a volcano in full eruption.

Mr. Bradshaw's eye sparkled. a.s.suredly the enemy was delivered into his hand this time. Mounting his rostrum, he stood gazing, almost affectionately, upon the perpetrator of the outrage, mentally pa.s.sing in review all the possibilities of punishment, from expulsion downwards, and busily caressing his countenance the while.

Presently some one in the form t.i.ttered. Then another, and another, and another. Then the whole room broke into a roar. Mr. Bradshaw, in high good-humour, allowed them to continue for some time: he wanted to rub it into Linklater. At last he cleared his throat.

"Your friends may well smile, sir," he began majestically. (Cheers and laughter.) "So serene are you in your conceit and self-a.s.surance that you proceed to break rules, to behave like a board-school boy, without even taking the trouble to observe if one in Authority"--he smacked his lips--"be present or no. What is the result? Pride has a fall, my young friend. You make a spectacle of yourself--"

Here the speaker was interrupted by a perfect tornado of merriment. A master can always raise a sn.i.g.g.e.r at the expense of a boy, but such whole-hearted appreciation as this had not fallen to Mr. Bradshaw's lot before.

"--a ludicrous exhibition," he continued, after the noise had subsided.

Cheers and laughter, as before.

"If you could only see yourself now, my boy, only behold the spectacle you present--"

This time his audience became so hysterical that Braddy was conscious of an uneasy suspicion that something must be wrong. Suddenly his eye fell upon the pad of foolscap before him, upon which he had been emphasising his remarks by vigorous slappings. The paper was covered with numerous impressions of his hand, neatly outlined in some jet-black substance.

After a hasty inspection of the hand itself the awful truth began to dawn upon him, and the now frenzied Lower Sixth were regaled with the spectacle of a man attempting to scrutinise his own countenance by squinting along his nose.

It must have been about this time, according to the best authorities, that the Head came in. That benevolent despot, pa.s.sing the door on his way to his study, had been attracted by the sounds of mirth within; and under the impression that owing to some misunderstanding Mr. Bradshaw was not taking his form that hour, he entered the room to maintain discipline until the errant master could be found. After his usual punctilious knock--he was a head master of the velvet glove type--he opened the door, and stood an interested and astonished spectator of the scene within.

What he saw was this--

On the benches rolled thirty boys, helpless, speechless, tearful with laughter; and upon the rostrum, with a parti-coloured bald head and a coal-black face, there mowed and gibbered a creature, which rolled frenzied eyes and gnashed unnaturally whitened teeth in impotent frenzy upon the convulsed throng before him.

Linklater had covered the door-handle with lampblack, and Mr. Bradshaw's favourite mannerism had done the rest.

II

Linklater's escapade took place at the end of the Christmas term. Early in the following January the Cricket Committee held their customary meeting in the President's study, to elect a Captain and Secretary of the School Eleven for the following summer term.

Usually such functions were of the most formal character. The senior "old colour" was elected Captain, and the next man Secretary; the Reverend William Mortimer was unanimously re-elected President (with an ungrammatical vote of thanks for past services thrown in); and the proceedings terminated.

But this term matters were not so simple. There were five old colours available: Pip, st.u.r.dy, popular, just eighteen, the best bowler, according to that infallible oracle the ground-man, that the school had known in a generation; Linklater, a beautiful bat and a brilliant field, with the added recommendation of a century against the County last summer; Ellis, a steady bat and a good change bowler, a singularly right-minded and conscientious boy, and therefore slightly unpopular; f.a.gg, a wicket-keeper pure and simple; and Jarvis, a stripling of considerably more promise than performance, who had sc.r.a.ped into the Eleven at the end of the summer term on the strength of a brilliant but fluky innings against the Authentics.

Of these five, Pip, from every conceivable point of view save one, was the obvious and natural man for the post. But the captaincy of the Eleven carried with it a School Monitors.h.i.+p, and the Law, as represented by an inflexible head master's decree, said that no member of the school could wear a Monitor's cap who was not a member of the Sixth. Now, Pip was only a member of the Fifth, and occupied but a sedimentary position in that. Consequently the Committee heaved a resigned if dissatisfied sigh when Uncle Bill, after taking the chair, announced with real regret that Wilmot--this, you may possibly remember, was Pip's name--was not eligible for the post of Captain.

"Lucky thing Link got his remove this term," whispered f.a.gg to Jarvis, "or he'd have been barred too."

"Dry up," said Jarvis, with a warning nudge; "Uncle Bill has got something on his chest."

Uncle Bill indeed appeared to be labouring under some embarra.s.sment, for his good-humoured face was clouded, and he hesitated before continuing his remarks.

"I have another message from the Head," he said at length. "I will give it you exactly as I received it, without comment. It is not a pleasant message, but you--we have no choice but to obey orders. It is this. The next in seniority, Linklater, is a member of the Sixth, and therefore eligible for office; but on account of his--of a regrettable incident in connection with Mr. Bradshaw last term, the Head feels unable to make him a Monitor, and consequently he cannot be Captain of the Eleven."